The Importance of SEO and Conversion
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
Co-Founder: Lightburn
• Interactive Agency focused on helping client
drive revenue via the web
www.lightburndesigns.com
Founder: Cooper Safety Supply
• Online ecommerce company that sells safety equipment
• Started in late 2006 as an experiment within Lightburn to sharpen our skills in
ecommerce, search marketing and search optimization
• Multi-million dollar business
www.coopersafety.com
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
The Importance of SEO and Conversion
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
What is SEO
&
Why is it important?
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
What is it?
SEO refers to the techniques and strategies that help your website rank
higher within the search engines.
Why is it important?
Higher rankings = more site traffic = more potential to sell your products
or services
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
A few facts and figures:
• Americans conducted 13.6 BILLION searches in July 2009
Google - 8.9 Billion
Yahoo! - 2.6 Billion
Bing - 1.2 Billion
• Google Index is estimated at 1.5 TRILLION pages
2009 PR + Summit
What are people searching for?
• Knowledge and Solutions (Answers)
• Products and Services
• Entertainment
SEO Demystified
What are people clicking?
2009 PR + Summit
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
Understanding the factors used for rankings
On Page Factors (35%):
• Content & Meta Data
• Friendly URLs
• Linking Structure
• Freshness of Content
• Broken Links & Redirects
Off Page Factors (65%):
• Links
Off Page Factors65%
On Page Factors35%
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
Links are the biggest off page factor in achieving high ranking search results
Site
Links
LinksLinks
Links
Links
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
What does it this have to do with PR?
• Search Optimization and PR should to be
treated as a team
• PR helps drive SEO Results
• SEO helps drive more PR opportunity
SEO
PR
SEO
PR
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
PR
Awarenes
s
Conversation
Links
SEO
Rankings
PR / SEO Lifecycle
Bloggers, Journalist, Site Owners
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
Content Driving PR and SEO Opportunity
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
PR Driving Awareness and SEO Opportunity
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
Negative Tweet displayed on Mint’s Blog Home Page
Provides opportunity to communicate with the community
Content Driving PR and SEO Opportunity
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
What is Conversion Optimization
&
Why is it important?
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
What is it?
It’s getting more ACTIONS from the same amount of traffic.
Why is it important?
More actions = more revenue
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
Examples of Conversions
• Buying Something
• Signing up for a trial and/or offer
• Subscribing to an email list or RSS feed
• Reading multiple blog posts
• Getting someone to Tweet your content
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
Invitation to subscribe to RSS feed
Digg
Popular Article ListSocial Network Sharing
Mint.com Sign-up Offer
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
What does Conversion Optimization have to do with PR?
Conversions provide the fuel to further expand PR and Marketing
efforts and grow.
2009 PR + Social Media Summit
“I highly recommend keyword analysis, looking at server logs to figure
out new content to add, thinking of new hooks to make your site
attract more word-of-mouth buzz, pondering how to improve
conversion once visitors land on your site, etc”
Matt Cutts (Google Engineer)
www.mattcutts.com/blog